All Duke faculty are invited to propose interdisciplinary Data+ projects for Summer 2018. The Data+ summer program is offered through the Information Initiative at Duke and is part of the Bass Connections Information, Society & Culture theme.

In this ten-week summer research experience, students join small teams and work alongside other teams in a communal environment. They learn how to marshal, analyze and visualize data, while gaining broad exposure to the field of data science.

The Data+ team created two new datasets that we’ll immediately deploy as a part of our core research efforts and will serve as the basis for an upcoming Bass Connections in Energy project. The outputs will be used toward two new research projects on energy infrastructure and access in developing countries, and will serve as the ground truth data for developing machine learning techniques for identifying energy infrastructure and access. The students were fantastic: hardworking, passionate about their work and all-around wonderful people to work with. —Kyle Bradbury (Energy Initiative and Pratt School of Engineering), faculty sponsor for Electricity Access in Developing Countries from Aerial Imagery

The program runs from mid-May through late July. Each undergraduate participant receives a $5,000 stipend. Students come from a variety of backgrounds, majors and levels of experience with coding.

We are especially interested in proposals that involve a partner from outside the academy or a faculty member from a different discipline. We also encourage proposals that involve previously untested ideas or unanalyzed datasets, and we hope that the Data+ team can make a contribution with important proof-of-principle work that may lead to more substantial faculty work and/or connections in the future.

We also welcome proposals that will lead to the undergraduates creating tools that might be used in the classroom or facilitate community engagement with data and data-driven questions.

The project mentor was fantastic. The three students I worked with were superb. We were able to make great progress that will lead to journal publications and grant proposals. —Wilkins Aquino (Pratt School of Engineering), faculty sponsor for Classification of Vascular Anomalies using Continuous Doppler Ultrasound and Machine Learning

Please review the full proposal guidance. If you would like help developing your proposal, contact Paul Bendich. Please submit your proposal to Kathy Peterson by November 1, 2017.

Learn More

• Browse outcomes from the 2017 Data+ projects.
• Explore all Bass Connections summer programs.
• Find out how to get involved in Bass Connections.